


An Act of Contrition

by eveningstar



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Le Roman Picaresque, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, mob characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 19:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17209460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eveningstar/pseuds/eveningstar
Summary: Luciano generally means his prayers of penitence, but this feels like a sacrament, not a sin.





	An Act of Contrition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashburns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashburns/gifts).



> THIS IS PART ONE OF TWO I'M SORRY. Life hit me and will continue to hit me for the next two months (as you know of all people know) so expect Part Two in... April sometime? AS YOU SAID, think of it as the gift that keeps giving. 
> 
> I usually headcanon both Lansky and Luciano as mid-twenties-ish, but then between the novel cover and K.M.'s baby-faced Luciano I got to thinking about a Luciano who is closer to Banri's actual age, a messed-up teen with poor impulse control. (As a result, warning for very shallow understandings of repentance.)

“It’s been six weeks since my last confession.”

Luciano heard Father Matteo sigh behind the partition. He couldn’t really blame him. Luciano’s confession always took a while. From the litany of sins, to the amount of praying it took to achieve absolution, it wasn’t unusual for him to be in the confessional for over an hour.

What's more, it was fair of the old priest to assume that this one would be a long one. Luciano usually came to confession more regularly than this. He liked to keep his slate clean, knowing that death could spring on him at any moment in this line of work, just as easily as he sprung it on others.

He wasn’t sure that he believed, exactly - he’d never thought too deeply about it. It seemed obvious enough - kneeling in church on a Sunday was no different to kissing Capone’s ring, really. A show of subservience to a higher power. One some people did out of love, some out of fear, some out of ambition. Luciano’s motivations were far simpler. He had no desire to wield the power himself - it seemed like it would cause more problems than it was worth. As long as he had fine wine and a beautiful woman, he was satisfied. So as long as Capone was able to provide both, Luciano was happy to serve him.

The Almighty fell in about the same category - as far as Luciano could tell, he seemed to be living a pretty blessed life. He couldn’t say for certain that it was because of his regular church attendance, but all the same, why break the habit and risk it?

At least, that was how it had always been.

For the first time in his life, Luciano was keeping secrets from both Capone and God Himself.

One week ago, he’d seen Lansky talking to Dewey. Everyone knew Dewey was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and if Lansky was talking to him, it probably wasn’t chitchat about the weather. Luciano should have gone directly to Capone right then and there. But he didn’t. And he hadn’t. He hadn’t said a word to anyone, including Lansky.

Because two weeks ago, Lansky had kissed him. Well. He had kissed Lansky first, technically. Riding high on adrenaline from their narrow escape, he had grabbed Lansky’s face and pressed their lips together in jubilation. The last thing he expected was that Lansky would grab him back and kiss him in earnest. No, that wasn’t true. The last thing he expected was that he would want him to do it again. There was a desperation in Lansky’s kiss, like he was trying to convey some kind of urgent message to Luciano, but Luciano couldn’t understand the code. Like waking up just before the resolution of a dream, it felt like the answer was just out of reach, and maybe if Lansky kissed him again, he could grasp it.

When he released Luciano, Lansky turned around as though nothing had happened and ordered Luciano to come. Too distracted trying to settle his pounding heart to argue, Luciano had followed, to what turned out to be the younger Lansky’s hospital bed.

After they returned the goods, things went on much as they had before. They flanked a lieutenant at a business meeting, something about percentages on a new dock, the kind of job Lansky excelled at, impassive and intimidating, while Luciano tried not to die of boredom. They took an enemy hideout, Luciano enjoying the reprieve the senseless violence offered him from the thoughts whirring around his head. They staked out a suspected traitor, sitting in silence in Lansky’s car for hours. The days passed and Luciano still couldn’t work out what Lansky had been trying to tell him.

Luciano had intended to go to confession the evening after the kiss. He got as far as the cathedral steps, before he turned and went to The Black Cat Club instead. He knew he should confess, if not to the kiss (that was hardly his fault, after all), then to the impure thoughts that had followed it. But he didn’t want to share it with anyone, not even God Himself. Somehow, it didn’t feel like sin, not like the murder and the gambling did, not like the women and the booze. If anything, it felt like a sacrament. It made him think of his first communion - kneeling on the cold marble floor, waiting for the priest to place the consecrated host on his tongue, excited to finally taste the thin wafer he had been told would be transformed into the body of Christ Himself, and a little scared of the idea of eating human flesh, then his confusion when the wafer still tasted like ordinary bread. He wanted to ask the other children what it tasted like for them, but was afraid that he was the only one for whom the ceremony hadn’t worked.

He wanted to ask Lansky what it was like for him, but was afraid that he was the only one for whom the kiss had worked.  

Just when he thought things couldn’t get any more confusing, he spotted a pair of men in the shadows, which was hardly a rarity in that part of town, but something made him look twice, just as the headlights of a passing taxi illuminated familiar purple hair and a well-known scar.

It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together - the date of Benjamin’s surgery was fast approaching, after all.

Luciano knew he had to come clean to at least one authority figure - if he wasn’t going to tell Capone what he’d seen, his days were probably numbered, so he’d need to get ready to meet his maker, and if he wasn’t going to trust himself to God’s protection, he couldn’t let Capone have a reason to withdraw his.

He chose the former, making various excuses to himself, telling himself that surely not even Capone was more powerful than God. That it was for the kid’s sake that he didn’t want harm to come to Lansky, not Lansky’s, and certainly not his own.

“I… I have taken lives - I’m not sure how many - more than a dozen, probably -” Luciano could hear the nervousness in his own voice, could sense that Father Matteo had picked up on it, too. “I have gambled. Drunk. Lied. Been proud. Vengeful. Taken the Lord’s name in vain.”

Luciano fell silent.

“What, too busy for fornication this month?” said the priest dryly.

“I have… had impure thoughts.” Luciano could feel his face burning. It had just been a thought exercise, he had just been pressing at the edges of this thing, trying to work out what it was - if he wanted Lansky to kiss him again, what else did he want him to do? All too quickly, Luciano realised the answer was everything he could, and some things that unless he was as flexible as that oriental dancer from Dreamlands, he probably couldn’t.

“But you haven’t acted on them?” Father Matteo seemed surprised.

“... No.”

He had tried - not with Lansky, but after he turned away from the cathedral that night, he danced with Dottie Miller at The Black Cat Club and had every intention of dancing her into his bed. He canoodled her into a corner, but even as they kissed, Luciano could only think about rough hands pressing against the sides of his face, the feel of a thumb awkwardly pushing into his cheek. As Dottie wound her fingers in his and coyly told him about the most _darling_ bracelet she saw the other day that was _so much nicer_ than the one Big Bill bought for Sally Davis last week, Luciano wondered how Benjamin was feeling, wondered if he was as worried about his surgery as his brother obviously was. Dottie put Luciano’s hand on her leg invitingly, and he wondered if Lansky was with Benjamin now, sitting by his bedside. Benjamin had said that his brother often read to him from the battered copy of The Book of Boys’ Own Adventures that sat on the bedside table. Luciano couldn’t imagine it. Lansky? Cold, dour old Lansky? Lansky, who didn’t care about a single thing or person in the world except cold, hard cash? Just weeks ago, Luciano had watched him garrotte a man in cold blood - Little Mikey, who had run with them for years, until Capone found out he’d been running with another gang at the same time - without betraying the slightest flicker of emotion. That Lansky? Sat by the boy’s bedside and read him outlandish tales of derring-do? The thought gave him a strange ache in his chest.

Luciano removed himself from Dottie’s usually quite distracting company and before he knew it, he was standing outside St John’s Hospital, peering up at the lights in the windows, trying to remember if Benjamin’s room had been on the third or fourth floor, until he realised there was no possible pretence under which he could present himself, and went home to his empty apartment.

So, no. He hadn’t acted on them.

“I would like to believe,” said Father Matteo, “that this is because you have begun to strengthen your soul against sin, but even my faith struggles to accept such a miracle.”

“Ha ha ha,” Luciano said dryly, but offered no further explanation.

“Well?” prompted the priest.

“The… object of my thoughts?” replied Luciano, carefully avoiding pronouns, “I don’t - it’s not -”

“My boy. Could it be that you wish to treat this girl differently to the hordes you’ve been with before?”

“Make sure you pronounce that ‘d’ good and strong, Father, they take offence otherwise.”

“I’m sure.”

Father Matteo waited for a response. Luciano sighed.

“It’s not that. Well. I suppose -” Luciano thought about it, pressing at the edges again - no, he didn’t want to treat Lansky like the girls he’d been with - he couldn’t imagine it, pulling him in with flirting and flattery, wild laughter as they fell into bed, each taking what they wanted, then amicably parting ways the next morning.

He had no idea what it would be like with Lansky, but he knew it wouldn’t be like that.

“Impure thoughts are not always inherently sinful,” said Father Matteo. “You’re quite old enough to understand where babies come from, I assume. They are only sinful when -”

“It’s a man,” snapped Luciano. “It’s another man. I’m having impure thoughts about another man.”

His face was burning and he could feel the hot sting of tears prick his eyes. He wasn’t ready - this, thing, whatever it was, was still too small and fragile to be dragged out into the cold glare of clerical judgement.  

He waited for Father Matteo’s response, in silence that seemed to drag on for hours.

“You realise this is a grave sin,” he said at last.

“Of course I do!”

He did - he didn’t - he hadn’t thought about it. He knew, theoretically, but it had never been relevant to him, he had never particularly seen the appeal. Even now, this didn’t seem the like that - when Lansky kissed him, he hadn’t suddenly turned into one of the limp-wristed dandies you saw down at the The Purple Rose, and Luciano had no more desire to go watch Jean Malin simper his way around a stage than he did a month ago. He hated that the Father was counting him among their numbers.

“Do you repent of this sin?”

“I -”

Luciano couldn’t answer. He wanted to. He wanted to repent, to regret, to be sorry - he should be, after all. He should be disgusted. Even if not by the fact that it was a man, by the fact that it was _Lansky_.

Generally, he did mean his prayers of repentance. He enjoyed his sins, to be sure, but there was still some part of him that realised that as exciting as it was to burst into an enemy hideout, guns blazing, there was something wrong about taking lives as indiscriminately as he did. So he’d been grateful that he could come to confession and have it all washed away, that the deaths of those grunts didn’t need to weigh on his conscience, that they weren’t filling up the holy ledger against him.

But Luciano didn’t want this washed away. While he wasn’t sure he wanted it on the ledger come Judgement Day, he certainly didn’t want it forgotten, either. Didn’t want to forget the feel of Lansky’s lips on his, of his tongue sliding against Luciano’s, trying to share something with him, something Luciano still didn’t understand, something he still wanted to.

“My son,” the Father said sternly, “there is little point in coming to confession if you do not come with a penitent heart.”

“I know, Father,” replied Luciano.

“Child, I ask you again. Do you repent of this sin?”

_Just say yes_ , he told himself. _You said you repented putting a slug in Fat Harry, even though the whole town was glad to see the sleazy fucker gone. Just say yes, get out of here and worry about it later._

“I - I’m sorry, Father,” he said, gathering his hat and coat. “I - I’ll reflect some more and come back later.”

He pushed the door of the confessional open, ignoring Father Matteo’s protests.

He replayed the conversation over and over in his head the next day, and into the evening, as he kept watch outside the small speakeasy while Lansky collected payment from the owner. He realised later that it was because he was so distracted by the echo of Father Matteo’s scolding voice that he didn’t hear the approaching footsteps until it was too late.

It made sense - this was punishment for his sin, this happened because he was unable to repent as he should. In short, it was his fault that Lansky was bleeding out on the marble floor. They had managed to escape but they were out of their own territory and, ironically, the only safe place Luciano could think of was St Mary’s Cathedral. The other gang was Irish, there was no way they would bring the fight into a house of God.

Luciano pressed his coat against Lansky’s most serious wound, frantically trying to staunch the flow of blood. His hands were shaking and he was having trouble breathing. He’d was vaguely aware that he’d been scratched by a few bullets himself, but he didn’t feel any pain.

“Don’t,” he gasped, “don’t you fucking _dare_ \- not without - you haven’t told me - you have to tell me -”

He pushed the hair out of Lansky’s eyes, keeping one hand pressed against his wound, feeling hot blood seep through the expensive fabric of his coat. He wanted to look him in the eyes, to see if he could see the secret written there, but they were closed in pain.

Luciano pressed his forehead against Lansky’s, his own tears spilling on Lansky’s cheeks.

“You kissed me, you fucker, you kissed me and then I - I - and I couldn’t confess and now - now you’re”

He pressed his lips chastely against Lansky’s, then against his cheek, temple, all over his face, like a deranged fairytale prince trying to wake a sleeping princess.

“Is this - this is - is this what you wanted? You can have it, I’ll give it, I don’t care if I’m damned, just come back, come back for Benjamin, please.”

Lansky moaned and it pierced Luciano’s heart like a knife. He looked up and saw the wooden figure of Christ on the cross.

“Please,” he cried, “Please don’t take him, please, take me, damn me, I’m a good for nothing - he - he has a brother, You know, You know that he - he doesn’t - he probably didn’t - I’m the one that thought about - I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please, punish me - he - let him live, God, _please_.”

Luciano didn’t know if he had ever believed before but in that moment, he believed with every fibre of his being.

“Luciano?”

Father Matteo stepped out of the vestry. Luciano raised his face, stained with blood and tears and looked at him imploringly.

“Father, please. He’s - he’s - help him, Father, _please_. They’re still outside, I can’t move him -”

He had never seen the boy so distraught, not even when his own mother had died. Was this man the - ?

“Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll fetch Sister Francesca. She was a nurse in the war.”

Luciano nodded, though the Father wasn’t sure he’d heard his words at all. He ran for the sisters’ rooms as fast as his aging legs would carry him.

When he returned, Sister in tow, Luciano was stroking the injured man’s cheek and pleading with him in whispered tones. Sister Francesca shot Father Matteo a questioning look and he gave a small shake of his head - this wasn’t the time. She nodded and went to work, ordering Luciano to go and fetch hot water and a towel.

He looked at her, dazed and confused, until Father Matteo grabbed his shoulder.

“Come on, boy. I’ll show you where.”

Once the patient had been treated as best he could be, and Father Matteo had sent another of the Sisters to fetch Dr Moretti, who took care of Capone’s lot, he pulled Luciano into the vestry, handed him a glass of brandy and told him to sit.

Luciano obeyed, but kept flicking glances at the door.

“You heard Sister Francesca. He’s going to be fine. Besides, you’ve seen much worse, I’m sure. Why are you so shaken?”

Luciano looked down at his glass, tipping it so the soft light of Father Matteo’s desk lamp caught in the liquid.

“I don’t know,” he said at last, in a quiet voice that lacked all trace of his usual bravado.

“I think you do.”

“I don’t!” Luciano snapped his head up, eyes still rimmed red from tears. “I don’t,” he repeated firmly, as though trying to convince himself.

It made Father Matteo’s heart ache to see the boy like this. It was so easy to forget, with all his confident swagger, with the money and power he’d gained so quickly, that the boy was not yet twenty. Even as a boy, he knew how to get away with anything, charming the old nonnas with his blonde hair and angelic smile. They might have had nothing to feed their own families, but they always managed to find a bit of chocolate for Luciano. It wasn’t surprising that he’d fallen in with Capone as soon as he was old enough to carry a message across town. A kid like that, used to getting whatever he wanted with such little effort, was unlikely to be satisfied with any of the few decent occupations available to a poor Italian boy from Mulberry Street.

But even after he started carrying on in fancy suits, with his guns and his girls, he still came to church more often than not, and he still took the time to charm the nonnas just as he had as a boy.

“Luciano… the other day, when I spoke to you, this… is not what I imagined.”

“So much for the Seal of the Confessional…” Luciano muttered, and Father Matteo was glad to see he wasn’t so distraught that he’d lost his sense for sarcasm.

“That only means I can’t tell anyone else. If you’d ever bothered to come to Sunday School, you’d know that. Now be quiet and listen to me.

“When you said that you had been having thoughts about another man - I assumed that this was just some new depravity of yours, that you’d tired of the trollops you’re always about with, or you’d been to see one of those ridiculous shows and taken a liking to some young boy.

“But this is - I should not have spoken as I did. I’ve never seen you care for another person like his, Luciano.

“It is a sin for man to lie with man, there’s no denying that. But it is a far greater sin to reject the blessings our Father sends us, and there is no greater blessing than love.”

Luciano was still for a moment, then downed his drink in one gulp, slamming the empty glass on the table. He looked at the Father with barely controlled rage, and Father Matteo suddenly understood how he had risen through Capone’s ranks in a just a few short years.

“I’m not rejecting anything.”

Father Matteo met his gaze steadily, even as he mentally calculated whether he’d be able to grab a candlestick in time, should Luciano make a lunge for him. After a few tense moments, Luciano clicked his tongue and stood up.

“As you say, Father, he’ll be fine, and the good doctor is on his way. There’s no point in me hanging around any longer. Someone needs to tell the boss what happened.”

“You know,” called the Father sadly, as Luciano opened the vestry door. “I’ve had cause to fear for your eternal soul many times, but I never considered you a coward.”

The young man hesitated for moment, but for once, he made no smart comeback, and walked out of the church without a backwards glance.


End file.
